A court in
Vietnam sentenced prominent activist and blogger Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, known as
Mother Mushroom, to 10 years in prison on Thursday for “spreading propaganda
against the state” through her Facebook posts and interviews with U.S. news
services, her lawyers and mother said.

Quynh writes
blogs under the pen name Mother Mushroom (Me Nam), taken from the nickname of
her 11-year-old daughter whom she calls “Mushroom.”

She was arrested
on Oct. 10, 2016, for openly voicing her opinions on the deaths of people in
police custody, Vietnam’s sovereignty over the disputed Paracel and Spratly
islands in the South China Sea, and the government’s handling of a toxic waste
spill off the country’s central coast in April of last year.

The charges
against Quynh were based on her social media posts and interviews she did with
CNN and U.S. government-funded Radio Free Asia and Voice of America.

Attorney Nguyen
Kha Thanh said Quynh, 38, was sentenced at 5 p.m. by a court in the city of Nha
Trang in south-central Vietnam's Khanh Hoa province for violating Article 88 of
Vietnam’s Penal Code.

“Quynh’s health
is good … She is stressed out because she is innocent,” he told RFA’s Vietnamese
Service.

Before she left
the court, Quynh apologized to her mother and children for being separated from
them because of her work, Thanh said.

Quynh also said
she was not ashamed of what she had done and that she believed that her mother
and children were not ashamed of her either, he said.

Vo An Don,
another attorney representing Quynh, said: “Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh has maintained
that she is innocent throughout the trial. She said what she did was her
personal work.”

Quynh would
appeal the conviction, he said.

Quynh’s mother,
Nguyen Thi Tuyet Lan, called the trial unfair. She said she sent complaints to
authorities but never received a response, so she has had to rely on Facebook to
express her concerns and opinions.

Rights groups and
Western governments say Vietnamese authorities frequently use Article 88 along
with Articles 79 and 258 of the 1999 criminal code to arrest and imprison those
who support democracy and human rights and denounce abuses.

Article 79
pertains to “carrying out activities aimed at overthrowing the people’s
administration,” while Article 258 refers to “abusing democratic freedoms to
infringe upon the interests of the state, the legitimate rights and interests of
organizations and/or citizens.”

They all carry
lengthy jail sentences or even life imprisonment in some cases.

‘Outrageous to
put her on trial’

New York-based
Human Rights Watch on Wednesday called for the government to immediately release
Quynh and drop the charges against her.

“It’s outrageous
to put Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh on trial simply for using her right to free
expression to call for government reform and accountability,” said Phil
Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, in a statement.

“The scandal here
is not what Mother Mushroom said, but Hanoi’s stubborn refusal to repeal
draconian, rights-abusing laws that punish peaceful dissent and tarnish
Vietnam’s international reputation,” he said.

Quynh, who was
honored this year with the U.S. State Department’s International Woman of
Courage Award for her work highlighting rights abuses and promoting peaceful
dissent in the one-party state, had been held incommunicado since her arrest by
Vietnamese authorities last October.

Though Vietnamese
authorities tightly control state media in the communist country, a flourishing
social media scene has allowed activists and dissidents to publicly voice their
grievances.

Reported by
RFA’s Vietnamese Service. Translated by Viet Ha. Written in English by Roseanne
Gerin.